• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.508-521
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• 2006

The results of environmental equity analysis vary dramatically depending on different methods used. The information and data available to the researcher are also often uncertain and imprecise in empirical studies. A sensitivity analysis approach was used too handle uncertainties and methodological inconsistencies in environmental equity analysis. This paper explores the sensitivity of environmental equity analysis to two spatial measures such as proximity and scale. Two experiments were implemented to evaluate the effects of two spatial measures on the environmental equity analysis using a combination of control and experimental factors. Fulton County, Georgia was selected as a case study area for these experiments. Two major data sets including demographic characteristics and toxic release inventory (TRI) database for the study area in 1990 were integrated into a GIS environment. Two statistical analyses such as independent samples t-test and coefficient of variation were performed to determine the environmental equity in the study area and to compare the relative variability in the socioeconomic characteristics of populations over different spatial measures. The findings from two experiments indicate that the outcomes of environmental equity analysis are slightly sensitive to the buffer distance used to determine the impact zones of TRI facilities, but not to the geographic scale used in the analysis. The findings also suggest that the consequences of these choices can alter spatially and statistically the results in environmental equity analysis.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2002

Objective : Until now, there have been no evidence-based guidelines produced for the mass screening of hyperlipidemia cases in Korea. This study was done to find the most efficient strategy for a hyperlipidemia-screening program among Korean adults, Method : Seven alternative strategies for hyperlipidemia screening were formulated and compared ir terms of cost-effectiveness. Cost and effectiveness were estimated from social perspectives and using a two-stage screening process (initial testing and additional testing for positives from the first test). A computerized database (based on persons who had visited a health promotion center in one teaching hospital for a routine health check-up) was used to determine the cost and the outcome of various strategies. Official data was used in calculating direct and indirect costs. Effectiveness was measured according to the number of persons who needed clinical intervention for hyperlipidemia. A stratified analysis, considering age group and sex, was then done. Sensitivity analyses, focusing on several uncertain parameters, were also done. Results : Of the seven test alternatives available, the most cost-effective strategy was a screening program, which consisted of an initial test of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride. There was some variation in the rank of the cost-effectiveness ratios for the seven alternatives dependent on age group or gender. Conclusions : Current hyperlipidemia screening practice, for National Health Insurance beneficiaries, tests only the total cholesterol level with a cut-off value of 260mg/dl as an initial screening test. It is not the best strategy for cost-effectiveness, and should be modified. Different screening strategies taking age group and sex into account should be developed and used for the efficient mass screening of hyperlipidemia cases among Korean adults.

• Journal of Legislation Research
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• no.53
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• pp.213-267
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• 2017

Regulatory barrier is considered most challenging out of all FinTech barriers, which many technology innovators have always experienced. Even though technological solutions promise customers accessibility to more cost-effective and secured financial services, it is quite challenging to create regulatory environment that enables innovation FinTech industry. Especially, a common challenge FinTech innovators and business face is regulatory uncertainty and confusion rather than any particular regulation. Since many FinTech models are continuously introducing new innovative ways in providing financial services, significant confusion could be raised in applying principles of existing law and regulations. In addition, it is uncertain whether or not applying complex regulatory compliance model intended for large financial institutions to small start-ups is appropriate since most existing regulations and rules are established and introduced without considering innovative tools such as mobile instruments, e-trade, and internet. Therefore, new mechanism to access to regulatory information in a more cost-effective, quick and immediate way should be created. Regulators, technological innovators, and financial customers should cooperate each other to find out appropriate solutions for those issues. Many regulators are introducing regulatory sandbox which provides service providers with opportunities to test their innovations, during the test, providing regulators with enough time to understand risks of innovations. However, regulatory sandbox is not a panacea for all challenges to FinTech innovations. Therefore, regulators should make comprehensive and multidimensional efforts including regulatory sandbox in supporting FinTech ecosystem.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.871-889
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• 2018

This study aims to explore social participation needs among the elderly in Korea from the perspective of the elderly participant's. 40 Q-samples are drawn from the Q-population including attitudes and needs toward social participation in later life based on news articles, essays, research, documentary, and television shows. 35 subjects are analysed by the QUANL program and the types of social participation needs are divided into four patterns which accounted for 60.16% of the total variance. The elderly's portrayal of an ideal social participation is about making independent decisions and being able to actively participate in the activities they chose to do. However, their most undesirable scenario would be being confused and uncertain of what they should do the remainder of their lives. The needs of social participation among the elderly varies on four indicators such as ego, social capital, life satisfaction, life vitality and these four indicators have two sub-categories with a total of 8 types of classification. These 8 types differ by priorities, adaptation to life changes, motivation to social participation, and desired activity. Findings suggest that researchers and policy makers need to consider service user perspective on social participation in later life, not service provider perspective.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.71-81
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• 2019

Objectives: The lung injuries by exposure to the humidifier disinfectants (HDs) were reported in 2011, Korea. For the HD victims, environmental exposure level and clinical diagnosis were conducted to determine the levels of damage by HDs. Methods: The exposure assessment to the HDs from 1st to 4th questionnaire surveys were carried out for 5,245 victims. And the affecting factors of exposure levels were analyzed by characterizing exposure and demographic information. By using of exposure concentration and cumulative time, exposure levels were classified and compared by percentage of clinical diagnosis classes. The high exposure and low clinical diagnosis rating groups, and low exposure and high clinical diagnosis rating groups were analyzed to overcome the limitation of past exposure assessment such as recall bias. Results: Among the all applicants damaged by the humidifier disinfectants, survivors were 4,028 and the dead were 1,217. And male and female were 2,675, and 2,547, respectively. In case of occurrence age of lung disease, under 10 years was majority age group (1,536) and followed by thirties (917). Pregnant women and fetuses were 339 and 439, respectively. And the damages by exposure to the HDs were concentrated on these susceptible populations in groups with low exposure and high clinical diagnosis rating. On the other hand, the groups classified by high exposure and low clinical diagnosis rating were shown different characterization. Conclusions: The questionnaire survey on past exposure may be uncertain due to recall bias. However, the relationship between classified exposure levels and clinical diagnosis ratings might be shown positive correlation if the exposure assessment errors were analyzed and controlled.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.428-435
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• 2022

Objectives: The Indonesian Ministry of Health launched isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) in 2016, with general practitioners (GPs) at the frontline of this program. However, the extent to which GPs have internalized this program remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to identify the knowledge and attitudes of GPs towards the IPT program in Indonesia. Methods: This study used an online, self-administered questionnaire distributed via e-mail and social messaging services. A logistic regression model was employed to identify the explanatory variables influencing the level of knowledge and attitudes toward IPT among GPs in Indonesia. An empirical analysis was conducted separately for each response variable (knowledge and attitudes). Results: Of the 418 respondents, 128 (30.6%) had a good knowledge of IPT. Working at a public hospital was the only variable associated with good knowledge, with an adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of 1.69 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02 to 2.81). Furthermore, 279 respondents (66.7%) had favorable attitudes toward IPT. In the adjusted logistic regression analysis, good knowledge (aOR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.34 to 0.89), 1-5 years of work experience (aOR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.21 to 3.60), and having experienced IPT training (aOR, 0.48; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.93), were significantly associated with favorable attitudes. Conclusions: In general, GPs in Indonesia had favorable attitudes toward IPT. However, their knowledge of IPT was limited. GPs are an essential element of the IPT program in the country, and therefore, adequate information dissemination to improve their understanding is critical for the long-term viability and quality of the IPT program in Indonesia.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.11 no.8
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• pp.331-338
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• 2022

Successor representation (SR) is a model of human reinforcement learning (RL) mimicking the underlying mechanism of hippocampal cells constructing cognitive maps. SR utilizes these learned features to adaptively respond to the frequent reward changes. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of SR under the context where changes in latent variables of environments trigger the reward structure changes. For a benchmark test, we adopted SR-Dyna, an integration of SR into goal-driven Dyna RL algorithm in the 2-stage Markov Decision Task (MDT) in which we can intentionally manipulate the latent variables - state transition uncertainty and goal-condition. To precisely investigate the characteristics of SR, we conducted the experiments while controlling each latent variable that affects the changes in reward structure. Evaluation results showed that SR-Dyna could learn to respond to the reward changes in relation to the changes in latent variables, but could not learn rapidly in that situation. This brings about the necessity to build more robust RL models that can rapidly learn to respond to the frequent changes in the environment in which latent variables and reward structure change at the same time.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.59-76
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• 2023

Since the COVID-19 era, the rise in apartment prices has been unconventional. In this uncertain real estate market, price prediction research is very important. In this paper, a model is created to predict the actual transaction price of future apartments after building a vast data set of 870,000 from 2015 to 2020 through data collection and crawling on various real estate sites and collecting as many variables as possible. This study first solved the multicollinearity problem by removing and combining variables. After that, a total of five variable selection algorithms were used to extract meaningful independent variables, such as Forward Selection, Backward Elimination, Stepwise Selection, L1 Regulation, and Principal Component Analysis(PCA). In addition, a total of four machine learning and deep learning algorithms were used for deep neural network(DNN), XGBoost, CatBoost, and Linear Regression to learn the model after hyperparameter optimization and compare predictive power between models. In the additional experiment, the experiment was conducted while changing the number of nodes and layers of the DNN to find the most appropriate number of nodes and layers. In conclusion, as a model with the best performance, the actual transaction price of apartments in 2021 was predicted and compared with the actual data in 2021. Through this, I am confident that machine learning and deep learning will help investors make the right decisions when purchasing homes in various economic situations.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.499-508
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• 2023

Purpose: Despite scientific evidence regarding laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) for advanced gastric cancer treatment, its application in patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy remains uncertain. Materials and Methods: We used the 2019 Korean Gastric Cancer Association nationwide survey database to extract data from 489 patients with primary gastric cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. After propensity score matching analysis, we compared the surgical outcomes of 97 patients who underwent LG and 97 patients who underwent open gastrectomy (OG). We investigated the risk factors for postoperative complications using multivariate analysis. Results: The operative time was significantly shorter in the OG group. Patients in the LG group had significantly less blood loss than those in the OG group. Hospital stay and overall postoperative complications were similar between the two groups. The incidence of Clavien-Dindo grade ≥3 complications in the LG group was comparable with that in the OG group (1.03% vs. 4.12%, P=0.215). No statistically significant difference was observed in the number of harvested lymph nodes between the two groups (38.60 vs. 35.79, P=0.182). Multivariate analysis identified body mass index (odds ratio [OR], 1.824; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.029-3.234; P=0.040) and extent of resection (OR, 3.154; 95% CI, 1.084-9.174; P=0.035) as independent risk factors for overall postoperative complications. Conclusions: Using a large nationwide multicenter survey database, we demonstrated that LG and OG had comparable short-term outcomes in patients with gastric cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.3-8
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• 2023

This study discussed production, demand, and future prospects of rubidium, which is an alkali group metal that is highly reactive to various media and requires carefulness in handling, but no significant environmental hazard of rubidium has been reported yet. Rubidium is used in various fields such as optoelectronic equipment, biomedical, and chemical industries. Because of difficulty in production as well as limited demand, the transaction price of rubidium is relatively high, but its detail information such as market status and potential growth is uncertain. However, if the mass production of versatile ultra-high-performance equipment such as quantum computers and the necessity of rubidium use in the equipment are confirmed, there is a possibility that the rubidium market will expand in the future. Rubidium is often found together with lithium, beryllium, and cesium, and may be present in granite containing minerals such as lepidolite and pollucite, as well as in seawater and industrial waste. Several technologies such as acid leaching, roasting, solvent extraction, and adsorption are used to recover rubidium. The maximum recovery efficiency of the rubidium from the sources and the processing above is generally high, but, in many practices, rubidium is not the main recovery target, and therefore the actual recovery effects should depend on presence of other valuable components or impurities, together with recovery costs, energy consumption, environmental issues, etc. In conclusion, although the current production and consumption of rubidium are limited, with consideration of the possible market fluctuations according to the emergence of large-scale demand sources, etc., further investigations by related institutions should be necessary.